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Referees come, referees go. It is only a normal procedure due to the age limit in professional football. One can discuss whether it is reasonable that you are - overnight - not able to referee international matches anymore. Anyway, this time, a really great referee who has probably joined the worldclass of referees for a couple of years, will leave the refereeing stage: Frank de Bleeckere.

Born in Oudenaarde (East Flanders), he is a skilled PR/Sales manager and started refereeing in 1984. It did not take him too long to arrive at the Belgian top leagues. In 1998, he made his FIFA bow and nobody could divine how outstanding his career would become:

FIFA World Cup:

2006 in Germany, assisted by Peter Hermans and Walter Vromans:

Matches: 4; Yellow Cards: 19 (4,8 p.m.); Red Cards: 0

- Group Stage: Argentina 2-1 Côte d'Ivoire (5 YCs)

- Group Stage: Japan 0-0 Croatia (5 YCs)

- Round of 16: England 1-0 Ecuador (6 YCs)

- Quarterfinals: Italy 3-0 Ukraine (3 YCs)

2010 in South Africa, assisted by Peter Hermans and Walter Vromans:

Matches: 3; Yellow Cards: 14 (4,7 p.m.); Red Cards: 1 (0,3 p.m.)

- Group Stage: Argentina 4-1 Korea Rep. (5 YCs)

- Group Stage: USA 1-0 Algeria (4 YCs, 1 RC)

- Round of 16: Paraguay 5-3 pso Japan (5 YCs)

FIFA U20 World Cup:

2009 in Egypt, assisted by Peter Hermans and Walter Vromans:

Matches: 4; Yellow Cards: 17 (4,3 p.m.); Red Cards: 2 (0,5 p.m.)

- Opener: Egypt 4-1 Trinidad & Tobago (4 YCs)

- Group Stage: Nigeria 0-2 Spain (7 YCs, 1 RC)

- Group Stage: Australia 1-3 Brazil (3 YCs)

- Final: Ghana 4-3 pso Brazil (3 YCs, 1 RC)

UEFA Euro:

2008 in Austria/Switzerland, assisted by Peter Hermans and Alex Verstraeten:

Turkey 4-2 Switzerland (8 YCs); match is known as "battle of Istanbul". This match can be seen as basis for Frank de Bleeckere's career. Actually, Luis Medina Cantalejo was appointed for this match, Turkey however rejected him after his perfomance in the UCL match between Schalke 04 - Fenerbahce (2-0, 4 YCs, 2 RCs, both to Fenerbahce) where he sent to Turkish players correctly off...

(c) zimbio

Of course, if you referee for such a long time on international level, you will always have such a palmarès. But de Bleeckere was a different referee.

He was probably one of the last officials who did not only apply the rule book but also showed his personality in every match. Moreover, he was - apart from his good foul detection - able to read a match and to know how he must handle it. Without any doubt, FdB always paid more attention to the control than to his decisions, a paramount example for this statement was last season's semifinal when he was in charge of "el clásico". I doubt that there is or will be a comparable referee in the foreseeable future, even though some of "our" young talents are really promising, if I only think about young guys like Svein Moen, Felix Brych or Cuneyt Cakir.

Some people blame UEFA for not having given him a final in CL. They say UEFA has to be ashamed. Without any doubt, de Bleeckere showed outstanding perfomances in the most important matches. The best point of time to appoint him for a final would have been in the area of 2008 or 2009, however, honestly speaking, the last two seasons were perhaps not enough for a final as he showed too many crudities in his matches.

That however does not change the fact that he was a great man in the pitch, we have to be sad that he will leave the stage as referee in a few weeks. One thing is sure: he will not lose his great personality and I hope that UEFA is going to find a place for him in their comitee.

Frank de Bleeckere will not go alone, Peter Hermans, one of the greatest assistant referees of the last years has also to retire.

November 25, 2011

I have made a ranking for all the Elite and Elite Development referees in UEFA zone. The list is made up of an ingenious system which takes both into consideration - appointments and perfomances, although the perfomances count a bit more (something around 1/3 - 2/3). Of course, a CL semifinal counts more than BATE-Plzen, I know that every referee prepares for every match and that every match can be hard. However, the list should indicate what UEFA thinks of their referees and for this reason, better matches in a processed stage of a competition are rated higher. Only matches of UEFA club competitions and UEFA national team competitions are regarded! The whole year 2011 is the basis (= 2nd half of season 2010/2011, 1st half of the current season). It is not only me who evaluated the perfomances, it is you who have created the basis of this ranking as I have taken the average of all the marks given to the respective perfomance (at least mostly it is the average :))..

You may comment the results.

Viktor Kassai is - at the moment - the no.1. But if Kassai is not appointed on CL MD6 and Kuipers manages to show a perfomance better than 3,0 (:D), then Kuipers will be the no.1 of 2011 without any doubt.
This list is of course only tentative, there can be some changes on the last matchdays, I am going to publish the complete 2011 list as some kind of Christmas gift.

I have to publish it now because I do not know when exactly Mr Collina is going to publish his Euro 2012 list. Therefore, I want to indicate a probable Euro 2012 list with your, my, our ranking. Here it is: